Grainfield spurge
Euphorbia segetalis
Family · Euphorbiaceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The bluish spurge of fields and coastal sands, with a star-shaped cap of leaves and the same white sap as all its cousins. It is among the commonest in the Peninsula and one of the easiest to cut by accident.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Dunes and sand · Town and roadside
Also known ascorn spurge
How to tell it
An upright plant twenty to sixty centimetres tall, bluish or glaucous. Narrow linear leaves along the stem, and at the top a whorl of broader leaves beneath the inflorescence. The glands carry two sharp horns. Abundant white latex from any cut.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None
The latex burns skin and is especially dangerous in the eyes, where it causes serious corneal injury. The whole family's rule, no exceptions: white sap, hands away from the face.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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